The present invention relates to a printer that will print from a carrier ribbon, film or web to a substrate carried on a flexible support that is planar and is driven directly by rollers or drives. The substrate carrier can be removed from the printer to be changed, and/or for other manipulation, such as loading it into another device for a related operation on the substrate. A removed carrier can be driven back into the printer. A cartridge carrying the printhead is also provided.
Thermal printing technology for substrates, such as compact discs (CDs) and recordable compact discs (CD-Rs) and also identification cards incorporate pivotally mounted heads and linear platens with resilient surfaces and carriers that have clamping mechanisms for the substrate. The carriers are generally separately driven.
Current technology for printing onto plastic substrates uses expensive head actuating and force modifying mechanisms. The printhead is moved on pivotally mounted arms that extend substantially beyond the envelope of the printhead, with a linearly driven carriage that has to hold the disc over an expensive, flat resilient surface with a clamping device that moves with the carriage. Threading the ribbon through the printhead and mounting ports of the presently available printers is a tedious job which includes taping the ribbon to the carriage, then taping the ribbon after the carriage is driven into the printer. This leads to large, high-cost printers for plastic substrates such as CD's, CD-R's and digital videodiscs. It is desirable to substantially reduce the printer size in order to take less space for the CD printers, as well as reducing manufacturing costs and user interaction.